A state board voted unanimously Tuesday to reappraise every warehouse in Adams County after an investigation found Assessor Gil Reyes had favored campaign contributors.

The report, which was given to District Attorney Don Quick, concluded that Reyes, a Democrat, violated property-tax laws, but it did not examine whether his treatment of contributors warranted a criminal investigation.

State officials could remember no other case in Colorado where a class of properties throughout a county had to be reappraised.

The investigation, conducted by the state Division of Property Taxation, found enough differences between assessed property values of contributors and non-contributors to Reyes "to indicate certain property-tax laws were violated by the Adams County assessor's office with regard to donor properties," its 55-page report noted.

"The clear conclusion from this analysis is that contributor properties were incorrectly valued compared to non-contributor properties."

The state investigation was prompted by a series of stories in The Denver Post, which reported that Reyes' largest campaign contributor — California-based warehouse company Majestic Realty — had won property-tax appeals that saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Post also reported Majestic's local vice president had given Reyes free tickets to Colorado Rockies and Avalanche games.

Reyes recently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to those gifts and paid a fine.

Group: Resign or face recall

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Reyes said he would cooperate with the state and help reappraise the warehouses in his county. But the leader of a citizens group that requested the state investigation immediately called on Reyes to resign or face a recall election.

Among the highlights of the report:

• From 2008 through 2010, "49.5 percent of the appeals handled personally by Mr. Reyes were for properties of contributors, and only one of those appeals was denied."

• Values of properties owned by campaign contributors "did not change between 2005 and 2009."

• From 2005 through 2010, "20 petitions abating a total of $848,694 in taxes" were associated with donors to Reyes campaigns.

• In three warehouse districts, buildings owned by campaign contributors to Reyes were valued 13 to 30 percent lower per square foot than buildings owned by non-contributors.

The report was presented by state property-tax administrator JoAnn Groff and three staff members to the State Board of Equalization, which accepted her recommendation for a complete reappraisal of Adams County warehouses.

Groff said after the hearing that her staff believes that since the 1980s, "there has never been a recommendation from the property-tax administrator for a reappraisal order. This is very unusual."

During the hearing, the silver-haired Adams assessor sat quietly in the third row, his hands folded. After the hearing, Reyes came forward to make a brief statement and a promise to help with the reappraisal.

As the assessor, "my job is to set the values fairly," he said. When those values were questioned by The Post, he said, he asked the state to investigate whether the values were "proper and in accordance with the law."

At this point, "it's not my intention to challenge the recommendations or reappraisal," he said. "If errors have been made, I want them corrected."

The warehouse reappraisal would be done by the assessor's office under state supervision.

But former Thornton Mayor Noel Busck, leader of a citizens group that also requested a state investigation, said Reyes should step aside.

"Mr. Reyes needs to do the right thing. He needs to resign," Busck said. "And he needs to answer to the appropriate charges that should be brought against him."

Busck said that if Reyes does not resign, his group will go to the county commission and seek a vote requesting his resignation. And if Reyes remains in office, "then we will seek a recall petition," he said.

District Attorney Quick, who prosecuted Reyes for failing to report gifts from a campaign contributor, has said he wanted to see the conclusions of the state investigation before deciding whether other charges are warranted.

In November, The Post reported that Majestic had won reductions in taxable values totaling $23 million on 11 buildings, saving the company more than $800,000 in property taxes in 2010 alone.

This year, The Post reported that in a series of e-mail exchanges, the local vice president at the company's Colorado warehouse complex, Majestic Commercenter, had made lunch dates with Reyes and offered him free Rockies and Avalanche tickets.

Taxable values didn't vary

The state investigation compared the values per square foot of buildings owned by campaign contributors and non-contributors in the Majestic Commercenter area. It found that contributor properties were valued 24 percent lower in 2005, 13 percent lower in 2007 and 17 percent lower in 2009.

The state also found that the taxable values of Majestic Commercenter warehouses did not vary from year to year while assessments of other warehouses changed and the taxable values of similar Denver warehouses increased 15 percent between 2005 and 2009.

The investigation also identified two other warehouse complexes where the values of buildings owned by contributors were set as much as 30 percent lower than buildings owned by non-contributors. The report did not identify those contributors by name.

Curt Settle, the commercial and industrial appraiser for the state agency, also told the Board of Equalization that three new Majestic Commercenter buildings had been valued 34 percent below what it cost to build them.

He said it is possible for a company to build one large, new warehouse at a cost exceeding its value, but "it's not the kind of mistake that gets made three times."

Reyes told The Post in November that the taxable values of Majestic Commercenter warehouses had not changed in years because he used income as a means of evaluating warehouses and that the Majestic buildings had long-term leases with fixed payments.

State investigators could not find evidence to support this claim.

The assessor's office told investigators "that this procedure would appear in the object sheets that are a part of each property record," they reported. "The division reviewed the object sheets for each contributor property and found none where the long-term, non-market-lease procedure was used."

Neighbors' tabs skyrocketed

The Post also reported that vacant land owned by contributors, including a patch of asphalt, had qualified for an agricultural tax break. The assessor's office has reclassified some of those properties as vacant, and the state report found no significant pattern of vacant and agricultural landowners benefiting from their contributions.

Also, The Post reported that a leading contributor to Reyes, Lloyd Land, had seen no increase in the taxable value of his hilltop custom home, while neighbors — including Rockies star Todd Helton — watched the taxable values of their homes grow by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

State investigators found that two premier homes in a custom development, owned by Land and his daughter, were "marked as 'hold' by Mr. Reyes." They estimated that their assigned values "were more than $500,000 below the correct level of value."

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